The sole catalyst for my entrance into The Sidekick was a broken ankle.

Of course, 10,000 other things were leading up to this decision, starting with my fear of change.

Change has always been especially scary to me as a chronic worrier turned incessant planner. It involves a culmination of two dangerous things: the unpredictable and the unknown.

I lived this way for most of my adolescent life. Yet as I entered my junior year, a sense of dissatisfaction began to permeate within me. The sacrifice of plans is that it destroys the unexpected gift of spontaneous change from entering your life. I felt stuck on one single path, unable to change or to bring change into my life.

Stuck in a teenage mid-life crisis, I decided that my desolation outweighed my fear and sent a silent plea into the universe to give me a sign if I should quit playing high school soccer — one of the most influential parts of my life.

Credit to the universe, I broke my ankle in the first week of junior year. By the next week, I had switched out of soccer and was enrolled in The Sidekick.

It was not the easiest transition. The second I walked out of my counselor’s office, I felt like I had made a monumental mistake. Maneuvering around D115 in a boot and crutches was a physical representation of how I felt for a long time. I had never picked up a camera, had absolutely no computer literacy and most of all, I felt like I could never change.

But, obviously, I would not be writing this and you would not be reading it if things did not improve. The thing about The Sidekick is that there is no standard that you need to prove to others; instead, it solely relies on how much you want to get out of the program. Thus, despite a lackluster first year, I came back and accomplished things that I never thought I would.

In a cliche, coming-of-age movie moment, I finally experienced a full-circle moment this year when I got the unexpected privilege of covering the first round of playoffs for our state champion girls soccer team. Sitting in the stands rather than on the bench, I looked wistfully at the field, a Sidekick shirt taking the place of the jersey I had always imagined myself wearing.

As we settled into our seats, my friend asked a familiar question, one that I had asked myself a lot as a first-year staffer:

Do you wish you had stayed?

As I held my phone with X open to @CHSCampusNews in one hand and typed furiously in a Google doc of notes with my other, I knew with absolute certainty that I had no regrets with leaving because, in a cliché itself, I wound up where I was meant to be.

If my freshman year self saw what happened in the end, she would probably curl up into a ball and wonder incessantly about the what-ifs. So, as an homage to her, I ask myself something for one final time:

What might have happened if I had stayed?

Maybe things would have been better. Maybe things would have been worse. I will never know. What I do know with certainty, however, is that I would have missed out on early morning photos in Grand Prairie, late night coverage at Buddy Echols Field and the lingering back pain I only get when page designing. Truly, I cannot think of another parallel timeline that would be worth sacrificing all of this.

So long, my second-choice elective. Change is still scary, but it gives me solace to know that it can lead me to another place like The Sidekick.

Follow @CHSCampusNews on X.